Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
-Michael Pollan: Forget Nutrition Charts, Eat What Grandma Said Is Good for You
-Green Eyes On: Is Bees’ Thirst Leading to Their Demise?
-‘Old environmentalists’ are challenging an obsession with land productivity
-More biofuel waste for cows, plus a California beef packer pulls a Toyota
-Perennial Plants from Seed
-Omaha World-Herald: Kenyan farmers persevere despite cultivation challenges
-In The Public Interest: What’s Next for High-Speed Rail?
-Mayor: Metro riders come first
-The Bikeway Network
Mark Feedman is the founder of CREAR, the Regional Center for the Study of Rural Alternatives, a small agricultural school located in the northern mountains of the Dominican Republic, near the Haitian border. Feedman has been an tireless advocate of sustainable agriculture for 40 years, and in this interview he recounts his struggle to create an educational center in the remote forests of Hispaniola. Topics include rural education, the future of Haiti, and the subject of hope.
With any reasonably successful blog, you have a conversation going on, often between an author and commenters who have a long history and background, and people coming into the conversation for the first time…Balancing the degree to which you write for the regulars and to those new to you is always an interesting exercise.
-Even Boulder Finds It Isn’t Easy Going Green
-Ecocities Emerging Newsletter
-The Cleveland Model
-De-Industrializing the City
-Urban Form, Behavior Energy Modeling in China: Sim City for Real?
-Beyond “Green Capitalism”
-The zero point of systemic collapse
-Tending the Garden of Technology
-Power
The world is immensely complicated, and the forces of sweeping change may overall boost transition towns for their positive contribution. Or as Ted Trainer lays out below, a course correction is needed now.
-Can Climate Shift the Biology of Ecosystems?
-Arctic sea ice vanishing faster than ‘our most pessimistic models’: researcher
-Snowmaggedon Backs All Climate Change Views
-Time to think small on climate change
-U.N. climate panel needs overhaul, top scientists argue in ‘Nature’
The Story of P(ee)
-Forest Carbon Scheme Gains Support, Faces Hurdles
-Warming Water Spurs U.S. to Consider ESA Protection for 82 Coral Species
-Rewilding’ the World: A Bright Spot for Biodiversity
-War at Home: The Local Eco-Warriors Making a Big Noise
-Brock Dolman on water: “Basins of relations: reverential rehydration revolution”
-Pathways to Re-Localisation with Joel Salatin
-Die Transition Towns-Bewegung – Städte und Menschen im Wandel
-Environmentalists launch low-carbon ‘churches in transition’
-Could chicken manure help curb climate change?
We stand at a critical point in human cultural evolution. Going back to the old normal where peace is just an interval between wars is not an option; what we need is a fundamental cultural transformation.
The history of modern humankind has undergone two major energy transitions, marked by the invention and development of agriculture and the discovery and exploitation of oil. The two energy transitions partition human history into three phases: hunter-gatherer, agricultural, and industrial. Faber et al. (1996) refer to these phases as “Paradigmatic Images of the World,” because they describe the common structure of societies throughout the world. The most important question is “what is the next paradigmatic image of the world?”
